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[Keith] Welcome to A Couple Of Admins Podcasting. I'm Keith Albright

[Rich] and I'm Rich Niemeier.

[Keith] This is Episode 'Lordy Lordy, Look whose 40' recorded on February 26, 2008.

Chit-Chat - What's going on with you?

[Steve]

[Rich]

[Keith]

Housekeeping Items

[Rich]

[Steve]

[Keith]

  • Contest Results
  • I wanted to take a moment to announce the arrival of the twins. That's right. Two beautiful Juniper SSG140?'s. I'm a proud papa.

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Meet The Admin Segment - Special Guest Justo Morales
1. Tell us about yourself. What kind of work do you do?
2. You are also a podcaster. Tell us a little about your show and what drives you to podcast?
3. Back when we worked together, you did quite a bit of development. Do you still do development?
4. I know you have kids and have been traveling for work recently, how do you handle the work/life balance thing?
5. Tell me your greatest career moment
6. Tell me your lowest career moment
7. Where do you see yourself in 5 years.
8. If there was one specialized area of IT that you could learn everything about, what would it be?

  • Network Upgrades [KEITH]
-T-1 Install - problem with extended demarc. I won't blame the Verizon tech. The extension jumps through two 66 blocks. He traced the first one and marked the 2 pairs. I punched to them and cross-connected to the next block and up to my server room 66 block. No go. Verizon turned up the line and I had to go down and finalize the install from the smart-jack. Turns out, where he had marked, I went one wire up. So, I only had 1,2,4 being passed.I must have screwed up. Once I moved it, came right up on the extension.
-Re-did network rack in server room. Hanging shelf full and I wanted to add another switch. Moved to a wall-unit and re-dressed cables. NOTE: Twist ties are great in a jam, but I will never use them again. My fingers were bleeding by the time I was done untwisting all the ones used on this. All looped in coils. With the new rack, there was some breathing room for the cables to dress them and be able to trace them properly.
-Link: http://
  • Network Design [KEITH]
-Multiple networks. Nice basic design I inherited. Web server and backend DB on seperate networks on firewall. I hate it when someone implements the DB on the web server. One gets compromised, the whole deal is up.
-I went with the SSG140?'s because they have 10 integrated ports. The SSG20? has 5 integrated. Each will take espansion modules, but I like that I have spares/expansions built-in. Not to mention, the sessions limit and throughput is natively higher in the SSG 140.
-I have 8 networks to connect now: Back Office, Operations/Production, Backup Network, Web DB, Web Server, HA link, Proxy network, and Internet Connection. If Proxy sounds redundant, well it is. Currently all traffic goes through a proxy, which will stay. I am going to have the direct connection for the WAN and remote access uses.
-Link: http://
  • CAPTCHA in my future [KEITH]
-"Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart"
-We have a number of public forms on our web site. Requests for info, customer feedback, etc. Form submission kicks off an email to the Customer Service Mgr. She approaches me today with 12 emails she got over the weekend. It's been getting much worse she tells me.
-So,I'm looking to implement a CAPTCHA system on the site. For once, the Cold Fusion is helping me since all forms use on dynamic form that I can hopefully just modify one and secure all of them.
-Need to run it past Public Relations first since there has been controversy over access by visually impaired.
-I downloaded a couple ASP open source CAPTCHA plug-ins and now I need to work on seeing if they will integrate into my setup well.
-RE-CAPTCHA may also be a possibility. It is a free service that you can 'out-source' your CAPTCHA to and they benefit by using your visitors to OCR text for them. Basically, they take text from old books they are trying to OCR and the parts the OCR system can't understand, it farms out to users to decipher it for them. Each CAPTCHA is farmed out several times to get a consensus on the interpretation.
-Link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/aspsig/ and http://sourceforge.net/projects/asp-captcha/ and http://recaptcha.net/resources.html
  • USB Driver Letter Manager [KEITH]
-The engineer at work found this. He needs to load a CAD app on one of the managers workstations and he has all the drawings hard-coded to the F: drive. Problem is, the user has a couple USB keys and it keeps stepping on the drive letter. This utility jumps in an manages the drive letters as well as a couple really cool features.
-Runs as a service once installed, which means the user doesn't have to have escalated privileges to change drive letter assignments, etc.
-You can set which letters to use, to exclude, map drives to letters based on their embedded device name, etc. Most cool is that you can mount the device to a directory. e.g. C:\USB1? and C:\USB2?. I was thinking this could be a cool concept for mounting a 'My Documents' folder in a shared office environment.
-Link: http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html

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Listener Feedback

From Listener.......Doug who posted a comment on the blog

Relax guys…I’m just giving ya’s a hard time. I do enjoy the show, just sometimes it seems to drag in the beginning.

Doug - Pasadena, MD

Doug followed up with another post.....

I guess I should also mention that I’m in the same business you’re in. I work in the DC area as a DoD? contractor to a research lab and I and three other coworkers support several hundred people on various platform configurations. Their collective demands are high which for us means the levels of interoperability complexity are enormous.

We run a multisite Windows domain (presently Win2k3 Native AD) and have three E2k3 servers, several clustered file servers, two SAN’s, and a host of other scattered onesy-twosy style app servers such as PRO-E, Unigraphics, and other CAD key servers. We run a few versions of Linux and also have 2 OSX servers in support of several Mac people who refuse to use Windows (hey, I like OSX too, but it’s not workin’ too well in the enterprise right now).

I’m the stuckee for bringing everything we run on the backend up-to-snuff…..E2k7, Server 2k8, Vista clients, DPM2k7? instead of BackupExec?, SQL updates, System Center 2k7 deployment….etc etc. All the while dealing with the headaches of constant barrage of patch updates for everything.

You guys are in-the-trenches so to speak, just like me. Your show content contains a tremendous amount of practical hands-on experience regarding the “real-world” implementations of tech, in my opinion.

I suppose my little anonymous “rant” last week was more frustration, based on the fact that most podcasts that claim to be about similar things are more often than not about the “news” of such items…………NOT the actual success and failures of hands-on implementation…..the experimentation, if you will, of pre-deployment testing and then final rollout.

Didn’t mean to burn you guys….it just seemed to drag on and on more and more often in the beginning. You’re right though…..I’ve got a FF button, but I’d be afraid to miss that one cool tidbit of info during that “slow” period in the beginning.

Regards!! Doug - Pasadena, MD

From listener....Geoff who posted a note on the Wiki

Hey Guys,

I think you are doing a great job with your podcast. I am in the IT training business and talk to system admins all day long in Michigan area and am always bringing up your podcast as a must listen. I don't think that you take to long to get into the material as the one listener stated. I think it's important for your listeners to get a grasp of your day to day life to get a better understanding of where your view points are coming from.

I would like to hear more about Windows PowerShell? I hear it is going to be huge in Server 2008 I have people requesting training on it more and more by the day. I also would like to hear more about hardware you work with like what has held up the best for your current environments and from your past experiences on other work sites. I also would like to hear hear how you guys use Virtual Machines now and how you see them minimizing the need for so much hardware in the future. Also, it would be nice to hear more examples of what your daily lives are like as system admins without the sugar coating that most people put on their job to give people who are interested in joining the field a real life perspective oh what to expect.

Now about turning the power off on your PC or leaving it on. I am a avid overclocker and run several very powerful systems and spend allot of time talking on technical forums and the consensus is just to leave the PC on as chips actually run better and longer when at a constant temperature and don't do as well with drastic changes (hot to cold, cold to hot)but from my past experience the only real downside that i see from shutting your PC down every night is it shortens the life of your PSU. What you should recommend to your listeners is to start using their machines to Fold when not in use. And by Fold I am referring to Folding@home you can even sign up as a team and its a great way to build a community for a good cause. I would even turn one of my machines over to your team number to help you get started.

Wish you guys the best of luck,

Geoff

From Listener.......Luke in the UK who sent us an email

Hey guy's . Just a quick note to say about your show format ... Am a long term listener and really really enjoy your format :-) i am now listening to more and more podcast's :-) they give me the content in a better way than radio when and were i want it ... But also its the connection with the presenters and listeners that appeals to me :-) and as for the details me your show , i enjoy the sketch's :-) so please leave them in ... And as you said on the last podcast the sweepers for other show's are good info and i have found many show's through sweepers like there ... So keep up the great show and listen to you soon . Cheers luke (uk)

From Listener.......Kip who posted a comment on the blog

great intro to the podcast…nice to see the Dick Van Dyke School of British Impersonations is still alive and kicking.

[KEITH] I'm a little embarrassed to admit this Kip, but I never actually graduated from DVDSoBI?. I was 2 credits short, but I did receive an honorary degree because of my years of experience mangling the British accent.

From Listener.......Luke. Adelaide. Aus. who posted a comment on the blog

Hi Guys.
Great podcast, just love it.
I loved the monty python segment! hahaha
Couple of points:
1. I dont think you need to move the comedy to a separate place, keep it in the podcast
2. I like the name of the show, its truly geek roots.
Disclaimer: Ive only been listening to the show for a few months so I dont have name fatigue yet (-;
Keep up the great work.
Kind regards.
Luke Vanderfluit.
Adelaide. Australia
From Listener.......Curtis who posted a comment on the blog'''

Please keep the comedy in the podcast. I don’t want to have to keep up with another feed.

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Website Picks

Rich - http://

Justo - http://www.smoothwall.org Free version of Smoothwall firewall.

Last Call

Anyone....Anyone....Buehler.....Buehler....

Closing

All right, well that is it for the show. For listener feedback; you can email us at Feedback [at] acoupleofadmins.com or post a comment on the main site at ACoupleOfAdmins.com. If you use iTunes, you could write a review. If you just want to show us your listening, drop a pin on the Frappr map...there's a link on the show site.

Lastly, you can drop any show ideas or topic requests on the wiki. There is a link to the wiki on the main show site. If you would like to participate in the show; either through an interview, a segment contribution, or any other way, please let us know. We are also a member of the Techpodcast and the Blubrry networks. Check out some other great shows by going to Techpodcast.com and Blubrry.com....That's Blubrry without the E's

Thanks everyone.